Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Okay.It’s been about
a week since I finished off this book and I think I can coherently write a
review for this.I think this leans
toward 2.5 stars.I will start off by
saying I am disappointed by yet another YA series conclusion this year.Both series were my two favorite series ever,
and both ended in tragic disappointment and anger (the other being Clockwork Princess).

First I will start off with the two POVs (Tris and Four’s).While I liked the change, I think it should
have been done that way from the beginning [spoiler: especially with Tri
dying in the end.If you didn’t want
everyone to expect that was what was going to happen (after all, how do you
conclude a story when the character dies), it should have been done since book
1 ].But also, the two
voices were so similar.It was hard for
me to determine who was talking.The
only identification you had was on each new chapter page.If you forgot mid-chapter, you were out of
luck.Their voices needed to be much
more different.I felt like I lost a lot
of the book because I constantly had to remember who was talking.This was a total fail on the author’s part of
making sure her characters were different.And their personalities had been very different, but I think as soon as
she started writing both, she ended up blending them.

The change in setting was frustrating for me too.This book was supposed to be a dystopian
society, but as soon as they leave at the beginning of this book, everything we
know is thrown away.Not to say they are
not still in a dystopian society, but it is not what we think.This was something that was very hard for me
to get over.Now, I can accept the whole
scientific background to this whole thing seeing as I majored in Biochemistry and genetics is very interesting to me,
but it completely changed the type of story this was to me.It took me a good 300 – 400 pages to get
comfortable with the change. I felt like there should have been more
foreshadowing about this twist. Ifelt
like the beginning of the series did not lead us to the end of the series.

Now, I was super excited that we finally got a clear definition
of what “Divergent” is.With the movie
coming out, I was trying to figure out how to define “Divergent” to my husband,
knowing that he would ask at some point.And before reading this book, I couldn’t figure out a good definition.So it made me start questioning how well the
first books were written if I couldn’t even define the title of the first
book!So it’s nice to finally know what
it truly means. And I think it was a good way to do it. I just feel like the
lead up to the realization could have been done much better, and much smoother.

There were some fights between Tris and Four in this book
that didn’t seem real.It just seemed
like something thrown in to create tension – not done nearly as well as the
first two books.Tris was never this
jealous, know-it-all like she is in this book. I actually got to the point
where I didn’t really care about her [spoiler: And that is probably why
her death didn’t affect me as much as it was supposed to ].She suffered from what my husband and I call,
“Bella Syndrome”.We grew to not enjoy
the main character because of who they become over the length of the series.Tris’s behavior was very out of character for
her and it frustrated me.And her
constant know-it-all attitude really made me angry.

I did like some of the other character relationships that
were built in this book though.And
there was a twist with a character coming back from the dead.We also got some background information on
Tris’s mom, which was actually very interesting.That was probably the most interesting thing
to me in this book – which when you think about it, is pretty sad.

The big fight at the very end was pretty much non-existent.I actually didn’t like how it was ended. I
felt like she got herself in a spot where she couldn’t get her characters out
of it any other way. [Spoiler: I hate that what they did to the institute was
exactly what the institute was going to do to their loved ones.What makes that any better?The institute people have people who loved
them too and they will not remember each other.It’s just frustrating that Roth couldn’t have come up with a better way
for them to win the fight.If you’re
going to have a good guy and a bad guy, the good guy can’t just counter the bad
guy with the same thing he was doing.It
was a total cop-out.She took her story
to a place that she couldn’t get out of, so this was the only way. ]

Okay, so now let’s talk about that ending.I’m going to be putting most of this in a
spoiler, though honestly, if you’ve paid attention to how this book was created
and reviewed, you can probably determine the ending anyway.[Spoiler: I am so frustrated that she
killed Tris.I did expect it about half
way through the book, but I was hoping she would do it in an epic way that at
least had a big impact on the world.But
she didn’t.I don’t feel like Tris’s
death did anything for making the world a better place.All it did was allow this “tragic”
ending.Okay, she gave up her life for
Caleb’s, which is cool because he had done so many awful things to her.But really, her death didn’t do much.If perhaps her death helped them stop the institute
from doing what they were going to do some other epic way, okay that would have
been better. Or the death should have been some type of Christ archetype (I
give credit to this to my husband).In Harry
Potter, Harry actually goes out and dies in the forest, but he comes back to
life.That death and rebirth has a big
impact.But Tris just dies, and for
nothing.I wish this had been done
better.And I hate getting attached to a
main character and then they die.If
this is what Roth thinks is a good ending, then I do not plan to read more
series from her in the future. ]

So overall I am very disappointed with this book.There was a lot of wrap up at the end, but it
wasn’t really about what the world became.It was more about the characters (Tobias) dealing with the events of
what happened.I wish we had gotten more
world wrap up.Their immediate world
changed, but they didn’t really change anything else that happened in the rest
of the world.Other experiments are
still out there and don’t know what they are.This series could have been an epic win, but in the end, all it did was
epically fail.